Pottery invented in China to cook food and brew alcohol

Pottery invented in China to cook food and brew alcohol

The oldest known samples of pottery have been unearthed in southern China.

The US archaeologists involved have determined that fragments from a large bowl found in Xianrendong Cave, Jiangxi Province, are 20,000 years old.

The discovery, published in the journal Science, is the latest in recent years that have pushed back the invention of pottery by 10,000 years.

It is thought that the bowl was a cauldron to cook food, or possibly to brew alcohol.

So, I have to ask.

Where does this put the Jomon relics?
Second, I just love the title "and brew alcohol" OK so ancient China had brew. They weren't primitive in my book if the brewed hootch

I love discovering new things about ancient man

Another source with some pics.

The earliest pottery found in the cave is believed to date back about 20,000 years ago, said the study by researchers at Peking University in China, Boston University and Harvard University in the United States, and Eberhard Karls University in Germany.

That period was known as the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), about 25,000 to 19,000 years ago.

An accompanying commentary by Gideon Shelach, professor in department of East Asian Studies, Hebrew University suggested that even though the pottery may predate farming, "scarcity of resources during the LGM forced people to develop better ways of collecting and processing food."

I was reading that earlier today on physorg.com and thought,20,000 years ago?
They seem to be making new discoveries everyday pushing back the technology of the human species.

And brewing beer at that!

Thanks for sharing this,Slayer.

reply to post by kdog1982



I think the article said something about cooking food too, Don't quote me on that.

Originally posted by SLAYER69
Pottery invented in China to cook food and brew alcohol

The oldest known samples of pottery have been unearthed in southern China.

So, I have to ask.

Where does this put the Jomon relics?

It puts them a few thousand years more recent than these relics.

Thus is really an astounding find, IMO.

Harte

edit on 6/28/2012 by Harte because: (no reason given)

reply to post by Harte


I need to do more research and look closer at the regions to see if there is any, even slightest possible connection to be found between the two..

Wonder where that puts the last "ice age" 20,000 years ago:

25,000 - 15,000 y.a. - full glacial world, cold and dry; Stage 2 (includes the 'Last Glacial Maximum')

www.esd.ornl.gov...

Seems necessity was the mother of invention what better way to keep warm than make alcohol/beer.

reply to post by SLAYER69


Food can be cooked on a spit over a fire.

Brewing beer takes a certain technological knowledge.

What I'm wondering is were is the history or evidence between 10 and 20 thousand years ago?

S & F, Great Thread.
How about 4000 year old noodles found in a earthen bowel in China?

In 2002,[81] an archaeological excavation at the Lajia site revealed 4,000-year-old noodles made of millet (instead of traditional wheat flour) preserved by an upturned earthenware bowl that had created an airtight space between it and the sediment it was found on

This you might be interested in

The discovery in northern China of domesticated varieties of broomcorn and foxtail millet from 8500 BC

en.wikipedia.org...
I think my ancestors ate pretty good!

Michael Symons advises that ceramic versions of this ancient pot were found in the Hebei province dated as eight thousand years old. He details their importance and that of the sandpot with information from two texts from the Chou Dynasty (which started in the 12th century BCE).

www.flavorandfortune.com...

Found this interesting also,sorry,it has to do with beer,but it's relevant.

While the human relationship with alcohol may trace back to our ancestors, the earliest chemical evidence for an alcoholic beverage dates back 9,000 years to the ancient village of Jiahu in China's Henan province. Based on the analysis of residues extracted from pottery fragments, McGovern and colleagues concluded that the people were drinking a mixed wine-and-beer-like beverage made with grapes, hawthorn fruit, rice and honey. The finding was published in December 2004. The following year, McGovern collaborated with Sam Calagione and his crew at the Dogfish Head Brewery in Delaware to re-create the millennia-old drink. Their creation, called Chateau Jiahu, won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival in 2009. "We worked hard on getting this interpretation right. Since it does represent the oldest alcoholic beverage, it was really gratifying to get that gold tasting award," McGovern said.

www.msnbc.msn.com...

Now,this is the oldest reference to beer I could find.
Again,it points to China.
They recreated that brew and it won a gold medal.

Of course it did,they had been working on it for 10 thousand years!

reply to post by guohua


4000 year old noodle


I remember that story...
I laughed when I first read that one.

I Love My Beer,,, Harbin Beer That is, from my home city!

A Delaware brewer with a penchant for exotic drinks recently concocted a beer similar to one brewed in China some 9,000 years ago.

Sam Calagione of the Dogfish Head brewery in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, used a recipe that included rice, honey, and grape and hawthorn fruits. He got the formula from archaeologists who derived it from the residues of pottery jars found in the late Stone Age village of Jiahu in northern China.

All Chinese will tell you, in northern China, Beer is necessary to stay warm,,,,,

he residues are the earliest direct evidence of brewed beverages in ancient China.

news.nationalgeographic.com...

Originally posted by SLAYER69
reply to post by Harte

 

I need to do more research and look closer at the regions to see if there is any, even slightest possible connection to be found between the two..

Jiangxi Province is in South East China inland from Taiwan

This link might be of interest to you Slayer

reply to post by SLAYER69


Interesting thread, thank you.

I am an artist and work in ceramics, also interested in and study archaeology. These programs are informative on the origins of pottery and chinese ceramics and could be of interest.

I would like to say though, that it is misleading and annoying that when certain archaeological finds are discovered 'science' invents its own rewriting based on only that which has yet been uncovered, for example, 'humans originated here' when there could be older evidence pointing to humanities origins in the south pole or under the pacific, and 'pottery invented in China' based on recent finds when there could be older pottery in the Atlantic or elsewhere. It seems very illogical to say the least.

Video: Ceramics, how they work



this thread also covers the same subject

Originally posted by theabsolutetruth
I would like to say though, that it is misleading and annoying that when certain archaeological finds are discovered 'science' invents its own rewriting based on only that which has yet been uncovered, for example, 'humans originated here' when there could be older evidence pointing to humanities origins in the south pole or under the pacific, and 'pottery invented in China' based on recent finds when there could be older pottery in the Atlantic or elsewhere. It seems very illogical to say the least.

Science doesn't do that the scientists do. It has been found that the best way to organize knowledge is to say, this is the evidence and this is what we think it means, then let other provide more information and intrepretation based on or against it....instead of saying, well my evidence and intrepretation might get overturned at some point so lets just leave it at, 'no comment'....when new evidence is found the 'paradigm' changes, this pattern of reigning theory and it being replaced has worked for many centuries

Originally posted by Hanslune

Originally posted by theabsolutetruth
I would like to say though, that it is misleading and annoying that when certain archaeological finds are discovered 'science' invents its own rewriting based on only that which has yet been uncovered, for example, 'humans originated here' when there could be older evidence pointing to humanities origins in the south pole or under the pacific, and 'pottery invented in China' based on recent finds when there could be older pottery in the Atlantic or elsewhere. It seems very illogical to say the least.

Science doesn't do that the scientists do. It has been found that the best way to organize knowledge is to say, this is the evidence and this is what we think it means, then let other provide more information and intrepretation based on or against it....instead of saying, well my evidence and intrepretation might get overturned at some point so lets just leave it at, 'no comment'....when new evidence is found the 'paradigm' changes, this pattern of reigning theory and it being replaced has worked for many centuries

I did say 'science' meaning the scientific community.

I realise there are methods to recording history though ''pottery invented in China'' is very presumptious, whereas, ''oldest pottery found in China'' is more realistic and truthful as there isn't any evidence of anywhere in particular being the first to invent pottery.

Scientific reasoning is based on proof and rigid controls so being so lax with history is being imaginative but possibly unreslistic and denying the bigger picture.

Inventing 'the biggest' 'oldest' etc isn't necessary to recording history, adding 'so far' would suffice.

It can also be damaging to society, like when ''human DNA began in Africa'' made a whole load of misguided people talk like their local black culture, sprouting dreadlocks and claiming an affinity to Africa under the guise of ''motherland innit'' etc regardless of genetic origins. Reports suggest the oldest so far evidence for civilisation is nearer Saudi Arabia / Israel and India rather than Africa. Even though the landmass wasn't even in the continents we now know.

'Science' should take a socially and morally responsible stance on truth instead of buying into the sensationalist soundbite culture.

Originally posted by theabsolutetruth

I did say 'science' meaning the scientific community.

I realise there are methods to recording history though ''pottery invented in China'' is very presumptious, whereas, ''oldest pottery found in China'' is more realistic and truthful as there isn't any evidence of anywhere in particular being the first to invent pottery.

Speculative claims can be made, often done so to soothe the ego of said scientist but also with the very real desire to attract money for further research

Reports suggest the oldest so far evidence for civilisation is nearer Saudi Arabia / Israel and India rather than Africa. Even though the landmass wasn't even in the continents we now know.

Hominins are found in Africa - depends on what you consider 'civilization' vs culture. The second sentence I don't understand, since we split off the continental drift has only been a tiny footnote. Perhaps you meant something else?

'Science' should take a socially and morally responsible stance on truth instead of buying into the sensationalist soundbite culture',

some do some don't as their is no central controling authority, good luck - the media will always highlight the competitive nature of science

double post

double post

reply to post by Hanslune


Out of Asia:New Origin Proposed for Humans, Monkeys, Apes

The ancestors of monkeys, apes and humans were thought primarily to have originated in Africa, but now what may be the oldest examples of such fossils discovered yet on the continent suggest these primates might have originally arisen in Asia, researchers suggest.

Sundaland

Previously, humans were believed to have migrated southward, from the East Asia mainland to Taiwan and then to the rest of Maritime Southeast Asia. However, recent findings point to the submerged Sundaland as the probable cradle of Asian population: thus the "Out of Sundaland" theory.

A study from Leeds University and published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, examining mitochondrial DNA lineages, suggested that humans had been occupying the islands of Southeast Asia for a longer period than previously believed. Population dispersals seem to have occurred at the same time as sea levels rose, which may have resulted in migrations from the Philippine Islands to as far north as Taiwan within the last 10,000 years.[4] The population migrations were most likely to have been driven by climate change — the effects of the drowning of an ancient continent. Rising sea levels in three massive pulses may have caused flooding and the submerging of the Sunda continent, creating the Java and South China Seas and the thousands of islands that make up Indonesia and the Philippines today.

Out of Asia

It remains an open question how early anthropoids actually migrated from Asia to Africa. Back then, the two continents were separated by a more extensive version of the modern Mediterranean Sea, called the Tethys Sea. Early anthropoids may have either swum from island to island from Asia to Africa, or possibly have been carried on naturally occurring rafts of logs and other material washed out to sea by floods and storms. Other animal groups apparently migrated from Asia to Africa at this time as well, such as rodents and extinct piglike animals known as anthracotheres, Jaeger said.

Compromising truth for profit and ego's isn't an ethical approach to scientific research or the teaching of.